Free Freed by Tara Crescent Page A

in the small waste-bucket at the side. I reached for some paper towels that Elodie had helpfully packed and handed him one. I couldn’t look him in the eyes. I had no idea what had come over me, and he had been right. I had displayed some very unsubmissive behaviour indeed.
    “I’m sorry,” I said finally, looking at the floor intently.
    “For what?” He sounded puzzled.
    “For jumping you. For being a bad submissive.”
    “For coming without permission,” he prompted. There was a smile in his voice.
    “That as well,” I blushed.
    “I liked it,” he said frankly. “I liked knowing you wanted me enough to break all the rules.” He chuckled. “But my cock needs some recovery time if you are going to react like this every time I feed you a strawberry.”
    My lips twitched reluctantly. I reached for my panties, the scrap of lace peeking out of his pocket but he shook his head. “Leave it,” he ordered. He tucked himself back into place. “Tell me what you wanted to be when you grew up.”
    Oh. I’d forgotten. “I just wanted to go to college. We weren’t rich, but I was hoping for a scholarship. Without a college degree, all I could see in my future were jobs working retail.” I made a face. “While I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, I knew it wasn’t that.”
    He shot me a look. “You said you quit a retail job to take care of your sister?” he asked.
    A tingle of fear ran through me. His memory was formidable. I remembered precisely where I’d said those words to him. We’d been in Bangkok, eating street food. It had been one sentence in a conversation that had ranged on many subjects and he hadn’t forgotten.
    I said something in reply and launched into some stories of the customers I’d encountered when I’d worked at Victoria’s Secret. Our conversation then shifted to what I wanted to do in the south of France this week.
    Travel plans made for a much safer topic of discussion. I expressed a desire to see as much art and history as possible. This part of the world was chock-full of Roman ruins that I’d always wanted to explore. Constantly moving from one mission to another, I hadn’t had a lot of time for tourism.
    My subconscious remained alert, jolted by that casual reference to my sister. He was easy-going. He laughed a lot, but it would still be a mistake to underestimate Alexander Hamilton.

Chapter 8
    Ellie / Jenny:
    The instant I laid eyes on the farmhouse, I could see why Alexander thought of it as home. Even though the house was empty and dark, it breathed solidity. It had been there for centuries. There was a sense of permanence about the place. Growing up, shunted away to boarding school when he was just a child, spending summers in Provence and winters with his father, Alexander must have craved that sense of belonging that he had never had.
    Alexander moved with easy familiarity, turning on the lights through the house. “It’s late,” he said. “I can show you the house tomorrow if you’d prefer to see it in the daylight.”
    I looked around with curiosity. We were in the kitchen, a large space with an old-fashioned copper range and a massive wooden table in the middle of the room. “This is nice,” I said. “But yeah, I can wait for the tour until the morning.”
    “I used to sit here and eat cookies,” he volunteered with a small smile. “I have so many memories of this place. Some good, others, not so much.”
    “Is your aunt still alive?” I asked him.
    He shook his head. “She died five years ago,” he replied. “She left me the farm in her will.”
    “She didn’t leave it to your father?” I probed. Alexander talked about him so rarely. Everything he had said had alluded to the fact that they had a difficult relationship.
    His expression closed. “They were estranged.” His voice was clipped. “Come, let’s unpack and go to bed. We have a lot of exploring to do over the next week, if you want to see all the Roman ruins in this part of the